


We Don't Know

by HicSuntDracones



Series: Fading into Legend [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, But no one knows about this, Dean and Cas are technically Dead, Episode: s15e18 Despair, F/M, Gen, I don't know how to tag this, In the Empty, M/M, Old Sam Winchester, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Sam telling a story, Which is a CONCEPT let me tell you, forty years later, post 15x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29264646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HicSuntDracones/pseuds/HicSuntDracones
Summary: Inspired by the tumblr post by @transdeanactivist"spn writers dumb as fuck for not realizing dean would race into cas’s arms and let himself be taken by the empty too. he’d hold onto cas with all his life and strength and love and he wouldn’t let go no matter how hard cas tried to push him or how much he begged him, sobbing into deans neck pleading for him to let go of him and live and dean shaking his head no and only tightening his grip, letting out a sob into cas’s shoulder as he feels the cold, black goo of the empty surround him and the angel in his arms but going soft as he relishes in the warmth coming from him before falling into an infinite slumber, dreaming of him for all eternity and leaving sam and jack to forever question what happened to dean winchester and castiel and never, ever finding out"Yeah, that's what this is.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Fading into Legend [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149101
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43





	We Don't Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stxrrycxs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stxrrycxs/gifts).



> So i saw the Tumblr post, and someone made an animatic of it and honestly? My brain went "OH THAT'S GOOD SHIT RIGHT THERE".   
> Like, if you're telling me that after all this, Dean wouldn't just grab Cas and never fucking let go because the angel is not leaving without him this time, then you are wrong. They end up in the Empty together. And then there's the mystery part. Because what happened to them??? Literally no one would know. Billie-who is not dead in this, fuck that-wouldn't know about the deal and even if she did, you think she's gonna tell Sam about it and start the cycle of 'gotta get my idiot brother back from the dead' up again? Nope.  
> So Dean and Cas become an actual mystery.  
> Thanks to @transdeanactivist for the excellent post and also their fic based on this. I took the idea in a somewhat different direction, hope you like it.

“Wait, so what happened to them?” The kid, Sam thinks their name is Lena or Laura or maybe Luther, his memory for names is getting worse these days, asks.

“I just told you, Chuck was stripped of his powers, Billie, Amara, and Rowena all reached some kind of agreement about where souls ended up, and Jack released his powers back into the world-”

“No, what happened to Castiel and Dean? The way you were telling it, Billie was after them and they had to split up from you and Jack, but you never said what happened to them afterwards.” The kid is curious. Sam doesn’t blame them. Over the years, he and Eileen have made a reputation for themselves as the best in the business. And he’ll talk to anyone who wants to hear hunting legends from an actual hunting legend. He just wishes it didn’t hurt so much sometimes. 

He sighs. “Well, we don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Did Billie reap them? Did they get snapped out of existence? Did they end up in Purgatory or Heaven or Hell or-”

“We don’t know.” Explaining this is always going to ache, he figures. Might as well let someone learn from it. “Look, me and Jack split up from them so we could gather everyone on Billie’s kill list and make a plan. Dean and Cas went after Billie in her library. After that....” he trails off for a moment. His big brother and his best friend, and he doesn’t know what happened to them, even all these years later. “Neither of them came back from that. Billie’s still around, so they obviously didn’t kill her, and if she knows anything, she’s not saying it. For awhile we thought that they disappeared like everyone else. It made sense, in a way. Dean’s died more times than I can count and so has Cas, makes sense that they’d be on Billie’s list. But when we got everyone else back, they weren’t there.”

“They just...vanished?”

“As much as I hate to say it, yes. Believe me, I’ve looked at every angle, asked anyone who might know anything about where an angel would go when being chased, who might know where Cas would go to keep Dean safe, and there’s no answers. Not even Jack knows. We had to wait a few years for him to start talking again, you know, with the whole turning into an actual three-year-old thing, but either he never knew or his memories are all mixed up into his new mortal lifespan. We don’t even got jack,” he punches out a sad little laugh at his own terrible pun. 

“Look, I don’t want to be rude, but isn’t that...kinda anticlimactic? You guys were fighting THE christian god, for like, fifteen years, and then suddenly half of Team Free Will vanishes into thin air. No explanation, not a trace, to the point where they’re more legends than people to the entire hunting community bar four. That’s....something isn’t right there.”

“What do you think I’ve been saying for the past forty years?” The kid has the grace to look slightly ashamed about this, remembering that they are in fact talking about Sam’s probably-dead brother and best friend here. “Fact is, we don’t know what happened to them, and probably never will. At this point....” he sighs again, because his last hope is slightly pathetic, but you know what, he’s seventy-six. He can have slightly pathetic old-man hopes. “At this point, I’m just hoping that they’ve been waiting for me in whatever afterlife I end up in. I just want to see them one more time.”

“I’m sorry,” the kid says softly and awkwardly, obviously not knowing what to do when the old guy gets sad. 

“Don’t be. I’ve had a long time to get used to it.” He claps his hands together, quickly changing the subject. “So! That’s the end of the Winchester Gospel, and the end of the Winchesters too. If you’re looking for more specifics on how things got sorted out at the end with the cosmic powers and all, you’re gonna have to talk to Jack. If he doesn’t know, your best bet is trying to get Rowena to explain things.”

“You say this like talking to the Queen of Hell is as easy as picking up a phone.”

Sam smiles, raising his eyebrows. “It is for me.” 

The kid laughs, a full-belly affair. “Okay, that is absolutely not fair, but I guess it makes sense.” The kid- _shit_ what was their name-stands to shake his hand. “Thanks again, Mr. Leahy. Means a lot to hear this from you instead of-”

“If you mention Carver Edlund I will start screaming.”

“Noted.” The kid shakes his hand and leaves the living room, stopping to sign goodbye to Eileen where she’s organizing some spell ingredients in the kitchen. Sam’s just happy he got out of trying to remember the kid’s name. It’s the little worries now, just like it has been for the past forty years. 

Sighing again-this time because it takes more effort to stand up now than it used to-he goes to the bookshelf. Volumes and volumes of hunting journals from dozens of hunters. Decades and centuries worth of solutions, endings, and answered questions. Even when there isn’t an answer per say, there’s still ways to deal with a problem. Except one. 

He pulls out a leather bound journal from one of the top shelves. It’s old. He flips through the first couple pages, going through an account similar to the one he just gave the kid, with the exception of the tear stains on the pages. The page directly after the original account is mostly blank. He can count the number of blank pages in his journals on two hands. Could do it on one if he had six fingers. He silently traces the words he’d written down when he’d still thought there would be more coming after them.

_Hunt/Case Description: Two missing parties, vanished. No traces of demonic or angelic interference. No readings indicating a haunting. Standard test battery yielded no results. Unknown entity at work???_

_Related Persons: Dean Winchester, Hunter, aged 41. Castiel, Angel, age unknown. Possibly-Billie, Death, age unknown._

_Notes: Cas and Dean have disappeared. Not snapped out like practically everyone else, but really and truly vanished. No traces, no evidence of a spell, no influence from the new Powers That Be. They’re just...gone. How do you get someone back when you don’t know where they are or how they got there?  
_

~~~~~~

In another realm, one with no light or form or substance, two figures float endlessly through the Darkness. They sleep, forever frozen in a desperate embrace, never again to be separated.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm emotional okay?  
> Something about the idea of Dean and Cas fading into legend because no one knows what went down at the end of 15x18 is deeply interesting to me. Like...SERIOUSLY. They're already fucking legends in the hunting community, they fought GOD, and then they disappear. Poof. Gone. They died for love and no one knows and everyone speculates and it's a goddamed mystery and the whole time they're just floating in the Empty, asleep. Like this GRIPS me. I can't explain why.   
> Comments keep me alive. Scream at me @hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon


End file.
